Farr pupils Totally Clued Up on Green School Award.
Children in P5-7 of Farr Primary School, Inverness are Scottish winners of the Total Green School Awards “Totally Clued Up” category after final judging recently took place in London.
Farr is an Eco School working towards its fifth Green flag and their award winning project on trees covered a number of areas towards that goal. The children looked particularly at the topics “Sustaining our World” and “Food and the Environment”.
Head Teacher, Sheila Lamont said: “We are absolutely delighted that the pupils have won this award as they worked really hard on their project which covered lots of curricular learning in science, maths, language, geography, history, drama and enterprise. They also took in 8 eco topics and their eco-code along the way.
“The varied and stimulating experiences the children encountered throughout the project included the obvious scientific aspects of the project like tree biology, evolution, use of field guides for tree recognition and visits to forests and sawmills.”
She added: “Along the way they enjoyed tree related food feasts and looked at many different ways we use wood. They ran their own tree-based enterprise project to raise funds for Save the Children plant a tree to support a family scheme, put on a stage show, learned about ecology in global forests and the links between these and climate change then used their knowledge to run an eco-action day teaching the younger children about sustainability. In addition they looked at the history of wood and wrote their own story book called ‘A Woodland Walk through Time’.”
Throughout the project the children had a lot of broader opportunities to develop as successful learners, effective contributors, responsible citizens and confident individuals and also to involve the whole school, nursery, parents and members of the wider community in their activities.
The inclusion of field trips and guest speakers introduced a careers dimension to help the older children gain experience of a variety of different job possibilities and they have also continued to develop language skills through letter writing, giving talks, researching then writing reports or making displays as well as creative writing and poetry. They have also had the chance to apply their maths skills to measure and estimate the volume of timber in their local community woodland.
Sheila Lamont said: “The school is particularly grateful to Strathnairn Community Woodlands and the children would like to thank Mrs Scott and all the other members of the community who helped by sharing their experience, welcoming the children, attending events or indeed by providing any help and support. As a result the children really appreciate the riches of the woods on their doorstep as well as forests and woodlands across Scotland and the wider world.”
The school is looking forward to receiving a framed certificate and a £500 prize.